Two People talking: Ezra Standish and Rodney McKay
by Sally Mn
Summary: Just a small dialogue between two... unlikely people.


**Two People Talking... **

McKay couldn't believe it. And as usual when he couldn't believe it, he made sure everyone knew it was simply not believable.

"You can't be serious!"

Edward - or Ephraim - or Elias or whatever he was calling himself this time - turned an incredibly honest, ingenuous gaze on him. "And pray, what can't I be serious about, my good Doctor?"

"Atlantis needs them! _I_ need them! And they're not yours!"

Of course they are," Edward-Ephraim-Elias said insouciantly, "and I have every intention of sharing the..."

"ZPMs."

"Ah yes, or as I might call them, my galactic windfall." He looked at the glowing crystalline pile lovingly. "_Every_ intention of sharing them... for a suitable price."

"The price will be getting out of the arrest and six thousand years' of jail you were looking at before this all -"

"I do not think so, Doctor." There was an edge to the honey-rich voice that - had Rodney been listening in the slightest - would have given even him pause.

But of course Rodney, who was still working on deciphering yet another incredibly advanced - alien - stolen stardrive that he estimated would take him at least, oh another day or so to get working, wasn't listening. Well not to anyone except himself.

Having been scared witless at least six times in the last three days by this odd green-eyed man with the instincts of an intergalactic con-artist, the nerves of an Old West killer, and a disconcerting affinity for city-sized explosives, he felt he'd earned the right to complain. Not that having _no_ right had ever stopped him before.

"Give me just one reason - one _good_ reason - one reason why someone of average intelligence, let alone me - why _anyone_ should let you keep them."

Edward-Ephraim-Elias looked at him for a long minute, then smiled slowly, like a cat who had not only found the cream but conned all the other cats out of it. "Three reasons," he said finally. "Firstly, they're mine. I acquired them fairly and openly."

"You won them in a rigged game of chance with homicidal aliens!"

"Not homicidal, carnivorous. I also won _you_, if you recall," Edward-Ephraim-Elias said. "As I understood it, they intended to have you over for dinner. Quite. Literally." He blinked innocently. "A pity we didn't have time to teach them poker, I could have made quite a killing."

"You already nearly did. If they'd thought you were cheating -"

"You shouldn't make unkind assumptions."

"Don't give me that, the probability of that string of dice throws happening must be somewhere in the millions, if not more."

"You mean you don't know? Dear dear, I thought you said -"

Rodney paused, and sniffed disparagingly. "Of course I do," he snapped. "7,054,279.8818 to one against, if I need to be precise."

"And invent it on the spot," Edward-Ephraim-Elias murmured.

"I don't have to invent anything, and even if I do, I'd make up something more believable than that, even for someone of lesser intell-"

"Now don't start that again, Doctor McKay," the other man gave a long-suffering sigh. "That was how you found yourself on the Menu Du Jour, if you recall, telling our sanguinary hosts how much more intelligent you were than everyone else on the bill of fare."

"The everyone else being you -"

"Yes, and three giant alien bedbugs, and it is fortunate that we convinced them otherwise, that you possessed inferior grey matter than the bugs."

"Only because you lied!"

"Something I excel at, as I told you from the first."

"How was I to know they _eat_ superior brains?"

Edward-Ephraim-Elias grinned wickedly. "You weren't. I would say that's how they work out who should be honored as the main course."

Rodney opened his mouth, and for the first time in this galaxy, had no words, or at least none snide enough.

"Three reasons, as I said," Edward-Ephraim-Elias went on. "Secondly, since I and my associates do not recognize the authority of your Colonel and his dear lady mistress -"

Rodney's powerful - if alarmingly desirable and desired - brain had no trouble imagining what Elizabeth, let alone Sheppard, would say to that image, and he winced.

"- Their chances of incarcerating me is, shall we say, dubious?" The man smiled. "Or to put it in more straightforward terms, such as even he will grasp... they have to catch me first.

"And thirdly, even if they do, your Colonel will not shoot me."

"Would you bet on that?"

The other man beamed at him. "A bet? Certainly, my dear sir, what odds?"

"_Why_ don't you think he'll shoot you?"

"Because my _own_ Captain will shoot him - and my Captain is much faster." He heaved a pensive sigh. "Of course, then he'll shoot me, and probably you for good measure."

Rodney stopped to think about that. The somewhat feral blond he'd caught a glimpse of had been somewhat... no, _very _feral. "Maybe if we give you back," he said hopefully, he'll let us _have _the ZPMs. Though personally," unable to resist the sarcasm, "I'd let us have them if we _didn't_ give you back..."

"I stand corrected. Knowing Larabee, he'll shoot your Colonel, then _you_, then me." The man - Ezra, that was it! - frowned. "Or give us both back to the carnivores."

"He would?" Rodney quavered.

"He might. And your Colonel?"

"They need me. They can't survive without... okay yes, after this, _he_ might."

There was a silence, then Ezra brightened. "On the other hand, if I do manage the... _suitable price_ for my galactic windfall, at least we'll die wealthy."

**-the end-**

(Written for a dialogue challenge)


End file.
